Twitching China Town - 3rd August 2007

Copyright - Adrian Dancy

Of all the places in Britain, I never would have thought that I would be twitching in the centre of Manchester in China Town. I mean there are like 10 trees at most, But the Presumed Eastern Olivaceous Warbler seemed to have been drawn here, possibly due to the foreign trees in an alien environment. I suppose it was like a Heligoland Trap in the centre of the City, without the Net.

This proved to be the case with there being no trap, as i got onsite for 08.30, and there was only one other birder on site, who had not seen it, but had seen a warbler briefly which could of been it.

At 9.15, several birders had come and gone, but at this time I was the only birder. suddenly a blob appeared in the tree. It was a warbler, I could tell on jizz alone. I had to go and investiget further, surely there can't be many warbler trevvelling through the centre of Manchester. and that was it, after a quick flight view and a 0.0000001 second perch, the bird had gone...was it the bird I was after...well never know.

Throughout the day several birder had come and gone but with no luck. I started talking to a birder who after about 5 minutes, I suddenly realised I knew him - Gary Jenkins, who was a Lancaster Birder. we both stayed until 1.15 and called it a day. He dropped me back in Preston.

We got talking about the bird that I saw, and I described the general jizz of the bird, i.e. the appearance and behavior. I mentioned that it was quite a large bird, bigger than a chiffchaff or Willow Warbler, and was behaving like your usual warbler woul be. He did say that does sound like it could be that, but annoyingly my view were not conclusive and I am unhappy, but confident to say, that I dipped the Manchester Ollie.

At the beginning of this post, I said "the Presumed Eastern Olivaceous Warbler'', this is because the bird yesterday was first reported as a Melodious, but after a decent view of the bird, this was definatly not yellow in any way. Mid-Afternoon came and the hippolais warbler was narrowed down to either, Syke's or Eastern Olivacious, why not Western, I have no Idea!

It was certainly a strange experience, even though I dipped it and also the pair of Black Redstarts that have bred this year.